Sir, – Your pensions levy Editorial (July 16th) makes several important points which we should all note. However, the statement that successive governments have taken an “ambivalent” position on the pensions issue is not quite correct because successive governments have been singularly un-ambivalent in respect of public sector pensions.
In fact, successive governments have underwritten extraordinary pensions for their employees, even those with poor performance records. Disregarding other State needs, the government pays out these generous pensions by taking public servants’ pension monies from tax receipts as needed.
Yet those in the private sector, trying to fund pensions, must hand over a portion of savings into government hands and must still achieve sufficient growth to avoid reliance on the old age pension. Anyone can tell you that makes a difficult job next to impossible.
So it is not, therefore, a matter of pension ambivalence on the part of the Government; it is more a matter of pension hypocrisy, with one pension rule for the public servant and another for everyone else. – Yours, etc,